By Rattan Mall, Editor, Asian Journal.Remember my last week’s front-page story titled “B.C. Liberal Regional Organizer Who ‘Bullied’ Moe Gill Was Kicked Out Of New Westminster Police Department For Racist Attack On Black Man”?
Well, the more shocking part about this is that newspapers such as the Vancouver Sun and the Province that wait for a chance to write crap about BROWN guys all the time, completely ignored it although they know about it.
What is more, that story was based on 1991 reports in the Vancouver Sun and the Province newspapers!
Bruce Burley, the B.C. Liberal regional organizer, who bullied Abbotsford Councillor Moe Gill to give up the Abbotsford South although he had democratically signed up enough members to get the nomination, was exposed by Alex G. Tsakumis (who runs the popular website alexgtsakumis.com) as being a former New Westminster police officer who in 1991 was convicted of falsely arresting and unlawfully confining Donald Richards, a BLACK landed immigrant from Jamaica, and was found guilty of discreditable conduct and abuse of authority by a police department internal investigation, according to the Vancouver Sun and Province newspapers’ 1991 reports.
If Burley had been a brown guy who bullied a WHITE Abbotsford Councillor to give up the Abbotsford South riding to a brown guy, you all know how the Vancouver Sun and the Province would have reacted!
You can well imagine the racism these newspapers would have whipped up against brown guys!
I wonder who ordered them not to touch the story.
Premier Christy Clark, who likes to believe she is a friend of South Asians, undemocratically parachuted in University of the Fraser Valley criminologist Darryl Plecas (whose niece is married to the son of Deputy Premier Rich Coleman) into what should have been Gill’s riding.
Darryl Plecas. Photo from SaltSpringIsland.org
The last person South Asians should support is Plecas.
This week again I emailed a series of reminders to the B.C. Liberal Party for their reaction to the facts about Burley, but the guys had NO GUTS to reply. I had also left a message for the Premier’s press secretary Mike Morton, but got no reaction.
No wonder British Columbians, especially South Asians, are hesitant to trust Clark and the Liberals.
The NDP’s overwhelming lead remains even though the B.C. Conservatives have gone down substantially in the polls.
The Liberals just do not have the guts to face up to the facts about Burley – so how can South Asians trust them?
Does their “star” South Asian candidate Sukh Dhaliwal in Surrey-Panorama have the guts to ask Clark why someone like Burley has been appointed to such a powerful party position?
Gill told me that Burley said he was “working and taking orders only from two people, that is, Christy Clark and [party campaign manager] Mike McDonald.”
Liberal sources told me this week that the all-powerful McDonald supports Burley and that the party couldn’t give a damn about South Asians. They expect South Asians to toe the party line like colonial servants.
Meanwhile, Moe Gill told me this week: “I am just working with people in the community and planning on what’s the next move we are going to be making. Christmas is coming up and we are basically letting people have their Christmas time.
“We have a large group of people that are sitting around and developing ideas and methods and how to go about it and what’s the next step we are going to take. We probably will be taking a [decision] next year and we will come out in January and announce that.”
He added: “We are looking at if we are to run, which party we want to run with, who we want to represent and how we want to do it. We want to do it [as] independent? Do we want to drop the idea altogether?”
Originally Published 24/01/13 On The Asian Journal